A gas cooler is one of the important parts of a carbon dioxide (CO2) heat pump water heater, and it must meet the needs of not only pressurization but also heat transfer. It is important to study gas coolers. In this paper, a heat exchanger with a spiral channel is studied. ANSYS CFX software was used to analyze the flow and heat transfer characteristics of the heat exchanger (single-plate model). The influences of the cooling pressure of CO2, the mass flux of CO2, the mass flux of water and the channel radius of CO2 are discussed. In this paper, the results show that the cooling pressure of CO2, the mass flux of CO2 and the channel radius of CO2 all have a large influence on the local heat transfer coefficient: with an increase in the cooling pressure of CO2, the peak value of the heat transfer coefficient of CO2 decreases and the average heat transfer coefficient decreases; with an increase in the mass flux of CO2, the peak value of the heat transfer coefficient of CO2 increases and the average heat transfer coefficient increases; and with a decrease in the channel radius of CO2, the peak value of the heat transfer coefficient of CO2 increases. The water mass flux has only a slight effect on heat transfer, and the lower cooling pressure of CO2 corresponds to a higher peak heat transfer coefficient, which can reach 27.5 kW∙m-2∙K-1 at 9 MPa.
Keywords: numerical simulation; spiral heat exchanger; trans-critical carbon dioxide heat pump gas cooler.